4/2/2025 India (International Christian Concern) — In a report issued last week, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) recommended that India be designated as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The recommendation, which USCIRF has made for six years in a row, has not previously been followed by the Department of State, which controls the CPC designation.
“Religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate” in 2024, the report reads, “as attacks and discrimination against religious minorities continued to rise.” Fueled in large part by nationalistic rhetoric from the BJP party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, these attacks include “vigilante violence, targeted and arbitrary killings, and demolition of property and places of worship,” according to the USCIRF report.
USCIRF’s recommendation that the Department of State designate India as a CPC is based on statutory definitions laid out in the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. Under IRFA, CPC countries are those that engage in or tolerate “particularly severe” violations of religious freedom. IRFA goes on to define that term as “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations” such as torture, prolonged detention without charges, forced disappearances, and the “flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of persons”
India’s Ministry of External Affairs, as it has done regularly over the recent years, expressed outrage over USCIRF’s findings, calling the report “malicious” and claiming, without evidence, that it “misrepresent[s] facts and peddles a motivated narrative about India.”
ICC field and headquarters staff have made similar findings in recent years, writing in a 2023 report that the BJP-led Hindu nationalist movement “is moving rapidly to restrict the rights of religious minorities across the country.”
Known popularly as Hindutva, Hindu nationalism is a political philosophy that promotes a narrow, religious-based understanding of Indian identity. The goal of Hindutva is to promote Hindu hegemony across India, leaving Christians, Muslims, and those of other faiths as second-class citizens and frequently in danger of legal discrimination or even mob attacks.
A February report by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate found a 74% rise in hate speech incidents last year compared to 2023. About 10% of the 1,165 incidents recorded targeted Christians—a population that makes up just 2.3% of the population, according to official estimates—while over 98% of cases targeted Muslims, either alone or together with Christians.
Tellingly, about 80% of the incidents recorded occurred in states controlled by the BJP, a fact that highlights the party’s role in exposing religious minorities legally and even inciting violence against peaceful Christian and Muslim communities.
Currently, twelve of India’s twenty-eight states have an anti-conversion law on the books: Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. In most or all of these cases, it is a BJP-led government which has pushed the creation of these statutes.
Written under the guise of protecting citizens from coercion, these laws criminalize conversions so broadly as to outlaw nearly all minority religious activity. In a typical example, Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law outlaws “conversion from one religion to another by misrepresentation, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or by any fraudulent means.”
Though international law would back this law up regarding its prohibition of force, the law’s definition of “allurement” is cripplingly broad and itself in tension with international law. Under the Uttar Pradesh law, allurement includes “the offer of any temptation,” including “gratification, easy money … free education in [a] reputed school run by any religious body… better lifestyle, [or] divine displeasure.”
Under this definition, any religious activity could be considered an attempt at forced conversion. Even something as innocuous as explaining one’s view of divine pleasure and eternal reward is criminal under the statute.
While these laws have their roots in an early post-colonial India afraid of Western colonists forcing their religion on Hindu Indians, the laws continue to spread decades later under the Modi administration — which began in 2014 — revealing that the concern behind these laws is less with colonists and more with preserving the Hindu-dominated status quo.
In a 2023 report on India’s anti-conversion laws, Luke Wilson, a USCIRF researcher, wrote that “India’s enforcement of state-level anti-conversion laws suggests the legislations’ intent is to prevent conversions to disfavored religions — such as Christianity and Islam — and not to protect against coerced conversions.”
ICC regularly sees how these anti-conversion laws make minority religious life in India difficult and works with many pastors attacked by mobs during church services. Similar mob raids happen outside of church services as well, sometimes targeting church community outreach programs like food or clothing distributions.
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